Sunday, May 28, 2023

The First Singing Computer



The first computer to sing a song was the IBM 7094 in 1961. The song was "Daisy Bell," which i remember learning from my parents even before going to school. When we learned it in music class, that fact that I already knew it made me look just that much weirder to my classmates. This 1961 performance inspired the tense scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey in which the murderous HAL 9000 computer is deactivated.



As the supercomputer loses its working memory, it is left with only its earliest programming, including the song "Daisy Bell." And now we know why that song was used. (via Laughing Squid)

2 comments:

MarkOfIowa said...

Today, I learned something new because of you Miss C.

Thank you so much!

Hope you have a good Memorial Day. The Firsts are hard.

-Mark

chich said...

I always felt bad for HAL. He was trying to follow orders that were kept secret from the pilots. He was told to lie to them about the mission's purpose by, as Dr Chandler said: "people who find it very easy to lie". This conflicted with his programming and he was trying to find a way to deal with it all.